OUR VIEW: Trinity Medical Center won approval to move to U.S. 280, creating both an opportunity and a challenge for Birmingham

The exterior of the site of the proposed Trinity Medical Center on U.S. 280. (The Birmingham News/ Mark Almond)

Trinity Medical Center's attempt to move from its site on Montclair Road to U.S. 280 has created no shortage of opinions on both sides of the argument. But when the question was put Wednesday to the state board with the power to decide, the outcome wasn't even close.

The move gives Trinity a chance to trade a 40-year-old hospital built on a hillside pretty far off the beaten path for a brand-new facility on a busy growth corridor in a prosperous area lacking convenient medical services. What's not to like about that?

Nothing, perhaps, unless you live or have a business near the hospital's current Montclair Road location. Or if you are a hospital currently serving many who live on the U.S. 280 corridor.

Brookwood Medical Center and St. Vincent's Medical Center, which say they will lose millions of dollars in annual business if Trinity moves to U.S. 280, could yet appeal the CON board ruling. If they do, Trinity will have to decide whether to wait for a verdict -- or take a risk and forge ahead with its $280 million project to finish what was to have been HealthSouth's digital hospital.

That's a decision only Trinity can make. But whether or not the hospital relocates on schedule in two years, the move promises to be, on the whole, a good thing for people who live on the U.S. 280 corridor and for the city of Birmingham, too.

If it had stayed at its current site, Trinity would have closed in a matter of years, its officials told the CON board. If it had moved to Irondale, as it originally planned, the city of Birmingham would have lost a major business and employer.

Birmingham put up $55 million in incentives to get Trinity to move to the HealthSouth property, which is within the city limits. The benefits could be immense if Trinity's move indeed spurs other development planned at the site. The spinoff construction brings the total investment up to $700 million, and the vision is that the hospital and the other facilities will become a magnet for medical conferences as well as patients from other areas who come here for specialty care. Moreover, the expectation is that there will be new jobs created in the hospital and in adjoining doctor offices.

But as the deal gets closer to consummation, there are loose ends to tie up. First, as the CON board urged, Trinity needs to treat Irondale's understandable heartburn over the hospital reneging on plans to move to Grants Mill Road. Second, Trinity must work to fill the vacuum it is leaving on Montclair Road, to the detriment of nearby property owners as well as surrounding businesses that have been patronized by the hospital's employees, patients and other visitors.

While Birmingham Mayor William Bell, with Trinity's participation, has created a task force for the Montclair site, finding a suitable new use for the campus may not be easy. There's no obvious prospect waiting in the wings, and the characteristics that made the site challenging for Trinity aren't going to go away. The hope is that the Montclair Road campus is a good location for something, and whatever that something is will manifest itself during the two years or so Trinity anticipates it will take to complete the hospital and carry out the move.

Clearly, Trinity's planned relocation creates some challenges. But none of them overshadows what's good about the hospital's move to U.S. 280.

First and foremost are the people who live along U.S. 280 who will have better access to medical care. That, in turn, will help Trinity prosper, which will help the city of Birmingham prosper, too.

Although there are sure to be bumps along the road, we think the overall prognosis is good -- very good.